TEXAS ETHICS COMMISSION

Whether a
home-rule city may adopt an ordinance that requires city candidates and
officeholders to transmit reports electronically rather than on paper.
(AOR-519)

A
home-rule city has asked whether it may adopt a campaign finance ordinance
under which candidates and officeholders are required to file reports
electronically and are not required to file paper copies of the reports.The request letter states that the city’s proposed system would
allow filers to print a paper copy that is similar to the paper form
prescribed by the Ethics Commission.The
request letter also states that the local filing authority would make paper
copies of electronic filings available upon request.

Candidates
for and holders of elective city offices in Texas are subject to the
campaign finance regulations in title 15 of the Election Code.Elec. Code chs. 251 - 258.In
a 1996 advisory opinion, we stated that a home-rule city may impose
additional campaign finance regulations as long as it is possible to give
effect to both the city regulations and the provisions of title 15 of the
Election Code.Ethics Advisory
Opinion No. 328 (1996).

Candidates and officeholders who file
campaign finance reports with the Ethics Commission are, in most cases,
required to file their reports electronically.Elec. Code § 254.036(b).City
candidates and officeholders are required to file campaign finance reports
with the city filing authority and are required to file on a form prescribed
by the Ethics Commission.Id. §§ 254.066, 252.005(3), 254.036(a).The statute provides that the report must be “written in
black ink or typed with black typewriter ribbon unless the report is a
computer printout.”It also
provides that any computer printout must “conform to the same format and
paper size as the form prescribed by the commission.”Id. § 254.036(a).The question here is whether that language prohibits a city from
adopting by ordinance a requirement that city candidates and officeholders
transmit reports electronically rather than on paper.1

Section
254.036(a) first appeared in its current form in 1981, and at that time it
applied to all filers, including Ethics Commission filers.Acts 1981, 67th Leg., ch. 873, § 7, at p. 3325.Since then, the legislature has mandated electronic filing for most
Ethics Commission filers, presumably because electronic filing provides
easier access to information than does paper filing.Acts 2003, 78th Leg. R.S., ch. 567, § 1, at p. 1919; Acts 1999, 76th
Leg., R.S., ch. 1434, § 1, at p. 4881.Although the legislature did not mandate electronic filing at the
local level, it is unlikely that the legislature intended to impede
political subdivisions from developing electronic filing systems.Furthermore, although section 254.036(a) assumes that files will be
transmitted on paper (and also that filers will have access to black
typewriter ribbons), we think the essence of section 254.036(a) is that the
information provided should be available in a standard format that is easy
to read.Therefore, we do not
think that section 254.036(a) should be interpreted to prohibit a home-rule
city from adopting an ordinance that requires city candidates and
officeholders to transmit reports electronically rather than on paper as
long as the ordinance requires the filing authority to make available, upon
request, a paper copy of the report that conforms to the same format and
paper size as the form prescribed by the commission.

SUMMARY

A home-rule city may adopt an ordinance that requires
city candidates and officeholders to transmit reports electronically rather
than on paper as long as the ordinance requires the filing authority to make
available, upon request, a paper copy of the report that conforms to the
same format and paper size as the form prescribed by the commission.

1 Under
Ethics Advisory Opinion No. 328, it is clearly permissible for a city to
adopt an ordinance that requires city candidates and officeholders to file
a report in an electronic format in addition to a report filed on
the paper form. The issue here is whether the city may mandate an
electronic filing system that is a substitute for submitting a filing on a
paper form.